


trippin', stumblin', flippin', fumblin'

by lady_ragnell



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Don't copy to another site, F/F, Major Character Injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 16:12:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17267264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_ragnell/pseuds/lady_ragnell
Summary: Five times Wynne falls, and one time Star does.





	trippin', stumblin', flippin', fumblin'

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning:** This is basically a story about one character being extremely clumsy. There are incidents of long falls, near-drowning, and (completely accidental) self-inflicted injury, with a bit of blood. It's not gory, and everything gets healed up very quickly, but be warned.
> 
> If you are very confused about what's happening, the [collection profile](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/The_Campaign_of_Five_Dragons/profile) may assist you (look for the bit on the epilogue party).
> 
> Title is, of course, from Fergie's "Clumsy," because I've never claimed to be a serious person.

1.

It starts like this: Wynne falls, and Star catches her.

Star has only known her for a day, and she can already tell that Wynne slips and slides her way through life, and it's anyone's guess who ever put a dagger in her hand and thought it was a wise solution. She was near to dying in the fight with the gnolls less through lack of skill and more through sheer clumsiness, but she survived that.

Surviving a pit of lava in the Nine Hells is something completely different, and Star has to take a deep breath when Wynne beams at her from behind the dark glasses that have somehow stayed perfectly on her nose like she doesn't realize how close she just came. “You need to watch where you're going,” she snaps, and crosses her arms. “What if I can't catch you next time?”

Wynne frowns a little, maybe puzzled. Star doesn't know what puzzled her, since almost roasting like venison over a campfire doesn't seem to have broken her stride as much as a stray rock might. “You caught me fine. Why borrow trouble for the future?”

Star opens her mouth, closes it again, and looks helplessly at Trilli and Tesni, neither of whom are helping at all. Trilli is looking around with her head tilted back like she's measuring out the whole plane in her head or maybe just writing a song, and Tesni has her lips pursed, looking at the two of them, but doesn't seem to have anything to say. “Just be more careful. If we have to keep scooping you out of near-certain death it's going to take us a while to get anywhere.”

“Thank you,” Wynne says, so earnestly it brings Star up short. “I know I'm a little inconvenient, but I'm trying, honestly.”

That makes everything worse, somehow, but Star has no idea how to say that without sounding like a monster, that it would be easier if Wynne _were_ an inconvenience, or at least one without redeeming qualities. But she's brave and kind and cheerful, and seems as easily crushed as a flower petal. Star isn't given to gentleness, but she knows she doesn't want to be cruel. “You're not an inconvenience,” she finally says. “We're a team. Ordained by the gods, even. I don't think they'd approve if you died in a pit of lava.”

“If you're finished,” Tesni says, perhaps understanding that Star has reached the edge of her courtesy and her patience both and that Trilli will happily stay indefinitely in one spot to make sure she could write a full-length ballad about one particular cloud of sulfur being belched up from a lake of magma, “I think perhaps we should keep moving. We'll make it where we need to go eventually.”

Star is the wisest choice to go first, if they walk one after another, so she does it, but she makes sure to look over her shoulder frequently in case of more accidents. Wynne slips and stumbles, but there are no more misses quite so near as the first one, and she takes all of them with better cheer than Star could manage.

2.

Star wants to hate Fairpoint Hold so much that she very nearly manages it.

Everyone else is happy to be there, and Star can make herself be in the abstract, if she thinks of it all from a distance. They've returned Cordelia to the sister she loves and misses, and relieved her of a terrible burden. Trilli has met the cousin she missed so much again. Tesni has thanked the people who changed her life, and Wynne has greeted an old mentor with delight.

They've all been kind, as far as Star will allow them to be, but they're also the women who lost the god Star serves with her whole being, nearly got his vessel killed and him imprisoned by a goddess who never should have been able to break her chains (though Star is scrupulous about what blame she allows herself to dole out: Lolth's freedom is all on her own shoulders, and not on those of the cleric of Yondalla called Kithri). Their heroism is undeniable, but so is that simple fact, and the only way to deal with all of it is to stay out of the way, and skirt around the edge of weapons practice for the men and women who live in and around the hold, practicing her swordwork against a man named Lanra and then pitting her flail against him and getting a few nice hits in.

She sees little of Wynne and Tesni, and less of Cordelia and Trilli, and is annoyed with herself for missing them, even if they _are_ the group the gods ordained for her.

It's a pleasure to go out to the training ground one morning and see Wynne there, a dagger out, having lessons from Terry, her mentor and the husband of Phi, the most sensible of the women who lost Paladine.

No one else is out, so Star just nods at them and starts work on her forms, the necessary parts of keeping up her strength and skill, before she's allowed the pleasure of attacking a straw dummy.

After weeks on the road, she's learned to tune out Wynne's yelps, so when one comes after a few minutes, she doesn't put down her weapon. It's Terry's quiet curse that captures her attention, and she finds him rolling Wynne over to her back, after an attempt at throwing a dagger ended up with that dagger somehow _in her thigh_.

Terry's opening his mouth to shout for help or order Star to go fetch it, but she drops her flail with a clatter and lunges across the space between them to lay hands on her. “Get the dagger out, I can heal her but not with that in there,” she snaps.

“Right, paladin,” he says, full of relief, and does as she says without questioning her, which she might be grateful for at any other moment, without Wynne wide-eyed and biting her lip on her pain.

For all Paladine mostly seems amused by Star (a fact that makes her cheeks and her temper hot whenever she thinks about it), he's always quick to answer her call when she's in true need, and a bleeding thigh wound is more than need enough, so the warmth inside of her turns to blazing light and she pours forth healing until Wynne has color in her cheeks and the wound has knit itself together. It takes enough of Star's reserves to terrify her at how bad a wound it must have been, for all it was in training and she did it to herself somehow.

Wynne closes her eyes when it's over, taking a few breaths, and Star turns her fiercest scowl on Terry, who's watching them both warily, perched like he's just waiting to have to go off and find Tesni or Kithri or Ulla. “A training wound!” she exclaims, and knows it sounds shrill. “She could have died of a training wound, what _happened_?”

He raises his hands, and he, like Paladine, is more amused than impressed by her scolds, but he answers seriously. “She got good force behind the dagger, but unfortunately missed her aim. The combination is dangerous, it seems. She has to learn, and would tell you that herself, but we'll truss her up in more armor, or add a spell or two, if she'd like that. Would you, Wynne? Are you awake?” He addresses Star. “Should we call for a stretcher?”

“She should be able to walk now.” She flicks Wynne's shoulder, and Wynne opens her eyes and smiles at her a little drowsily, all the pain and worry erased, just some embarrassment flaming in her cheeks. Embarrassment Star can handle. “Esmoor, the dagger's supposed to go in the other person.”

“I'll try harder next time,” Wynne promises, and groans her way to sitting. “You gave me a lot of healing, there. I thought it was just the dagger wound, but I think I twisted my ankle falling, and that doesn't hurt anymore either.”

Star closes her eyes and prays for patience. Paladine is pointedly silent. “We'll get you some better armor the next time you practice. And you shouldn't do it without Tesni or me around, either.” Terry coughs, and she goes back to scowling at him. “And _you_ ,” she starts, and runs aground immediately, since she knows it's just Wynne's way, to find the way of doing something that's the most danger to herself completely by accident. Star has no idea how she survived to sixteen.

“I think maybe we're done for the morning, Wynne,” Terry says, when Star's proved that she's past words. “Next time maybe try a straight throw instead of making it go end over end, even if there's less power behind it. Little danger that way.”

“I'll get it eventually,” Wynne promises, earnest. “Star, help me up? We can go to the kitchen and find a snack, maybe, healings make both of us hungry from our respective ends of it, I think. Plus I've missed you these past few days! Where have you been?”

Star helps her up, and doesn't bother with an honest answer, not in front of Terry, who's easygoing enough but might take exception to her dislike of his wife and her friends if she makes it more obvious than she already has. “Around,” she says, and keeps a hand on Wynne's back, half-afraid she's going to tumble right back down to the ground. There's still a rip in her leathers where the dagger went through that will need Mending, but the skin underneath looks all healed, if still bloody. “But clearly not close enough. Have you been up to other accidents? How's your training going otherwise?”

Wynne beams at her, all thought of her own injury forgotten, and starts filling her in.

3.

“You fell off the _ship_ ,” says Star, like Wynne doesn't already know it. Star's healing doesn't do much when Wynne is just wet and cold and miserable, and Tesni already healed her of her inevitable bruises and scrapes anyway, so Star is left sitting by her bed while she wrings out her hair and tries ineffectually to dry the rest of herself when a rainstorm has everything damp, even in the cabins.

Star wasn't even the one to save her, and feels guilty that she even thought of that at all, when she should be thanking Lauren a hundred thousand times for jumping in with no hesitation even in the middle of a wind that had them all out on the deck listening to Captain Keene shake off his usual stupor to bark out quick, clear orders that kept them afloat.

Wynne frowns and leaves off trying to dry herself in order to pull her knees up to her chin and look even more unhappy. “I know. I'm supposed to be getting better at this.”

“You are,” Star promises. They've been in enough battles now that she can see the improvements in all of their friends, the way Trilli's spells are less bravado and more true bravery, the way Tesni's spells come faster to her lips and hands, the way Cordelia takes to battles with something like joy. Wynne, of all of them, is the most improved, learning to duck claws and swords that might have caught her only a month ago, daggers and sword finding their marks more than they used to. “But you scared us all.”

“I know. I'm sorry.”

“Don't apologize,” Star snaps, and stares at her for a moment before going hunting for any cloth that might be somewhat dry. “Don't just sit there, you'll catch your death. We need to let those leathers dry out, see if the salt has hurt them, and then … your nightgown, I suppose? You're certainly not going out on deck again today. I'm putting you in bed, healing from Tesni or no.”

She wheels around and turns her back, since Wynne's often the shyest of them, and after a reluctant moment, there's a shuffling sound and then the sounds of her changing in earnest, and by Star's count almost falling three times. “My hair is still wet,” she finally says, quiet and unhappy, and Star turns back around. The nightgown is as dry as anything on the _Jeno_ is, but Wynne's hair is all but dripping, and she looks pale and clammy. If she gets in bed like this, she'll just soak the mattress.

Star looks around and seizes a cloak that's been hanging up and only has a bit of wet on it, putting it around Wynne, hood up, and rubbing her arms and head vigorously until Wynne gets the idea and starts helping, both of them batting at each other. The cloak is soaked and smells of wet wool when they finish (and wet wool from carnivorous sheep, no less, which is somehow worse than any other kind), but Wynne looks mussed and flushed rather than like a drowned cat, so Star will call it a win.

“You're all wet too,” Wynne finally says, belated and dismayed. “You were out in the rain trying to … lash down a sail, or whatever we were doing.”

Star is almost completely certain that's not the term for what they were doing, but since she's not sure what the right term is, she decides not to get into that. “I know, but I have to go back out there. Storm's mostly passed, but the seas are still rough.” Wynne frowns down at her nightgown. “No one blames you for falling,” Star offers, certain that it's true.

Wynne just frowns more. “I know. Everyone's so used to me falling, you're all used to it, and nobody else—”

“Trilli was standing out there declaiming poetry during some of the worst of the storm. Frankly, I was ready to _jump_ off the boat,” Star says hastily, cutting Wynne off because she doesn't know how to reassure her. Of course they're all used to Wynne falling, and hurting herself, and none of them like it, but they don't blame her for it either. They just worry. Trilli learned Feather Fall for her, and Star and Cordelia stay close when they can in battles, and Tesni teaches her first aid so she'll be able to help herself when she needs it. “You're not an inconvenience,” she finally manages, because Wynne clearly needs _something_.

“You say that? You think everything is inconvenient,” says Wynne, with a shadow of a smile.

Star ducks her head, and knows her cheeks are red. “Well, not you,” she mutters, and tucks Wynne firmly in before escaping back out to the storm and making sure the _Jeno_ stays on course, or at least doesn't sink.

4.

While they fight their fair share of creatures taking advantage of a continent still finding its feet in the wake of disaster, there are days when they're needed for other things, and while they're sometimes dull, Star always feels satisfied in the middle of them. Today, they're in a coastal village that had been visited by the tarrasque. The villagers, warned, hid in some caves with their livestock, but the remains of their homes and farms still need rebuilding, months later.

It's a good day: it's sunny, and Star can put her strength to work raising frames for houses and barns, with Cordelia's help. Trilli, good with animals after growing up in the woods, is helping to watch over the flocks and the business of them that needs doing even while they rebuild. Wynne and Tesni are running errands all through the village, doing this and that, clearing debris.

There's a chasm in the middle of the village, a deep crack in the earth, and they teased Wynne about it when they arrived, even though there are no less than three sturdy bridges spanning it, thanks to the enterprising villagers. Wynne's stayed carefully clear of it, after a laugh, and there shouldn't be a danger.

Star's at a house frame near the chasm when there's a sudden commotion, a cut-off gasp followed by yelling, and she knows what it is before she turns around.

It takes her half a second to take in the situation: a little girl near the edge of the chasm, being held by her mother, who hasn't even had time to start weeping with relief. Trilli, not far away, caught in the midst of her horror. A group of other villagers already springing to confused action.

Star steps away from the barn wall she was supposed to be picking up and takes off at a run. She only barely remembers to shout “Trilli, Feather Fall!” as she goes. Trilli may be shocked, after everything happening so suddenly that she couldn't catch Wynne with the spell, but she catches Star neatly as she steps out into the air and takes the fastest way down to Wynne.

She touches down to the sound of Wynne groaning, so at least she's still alive. She's sprawled in a less-than-promising heap, covered in dust, but it's too dark for Star to see where all she's hurt. “Star?” she asks, and coughs.

“Where does it hurt?” she asks, dropping to her knees at Wynne's side. Nothing looks right, but it's too dark to tell, and she can't smell blood, but there's enough dust she wants to sneeze so she might not, until too late.

“Everything is broken,” Wynne diagnoses pessimistically.

Star's hands are shaking, and she can't heal with them like that. “You really mustn't do that. I know you were keeping that little girl from falling, but you can't scare me that way. Come on, Tesni and the others will be organizing rope and a stretcher up there, but I can heal you enough to move, anyway. Just tell me where to focus.”

“I think my right leg is probably only sprained, not broken,” Wynne offers after a second, and Star's eyes are adjusting to the dark enough to see the way she's crumpled and agrees. The left is definitely broken, though, and will need setting before it can be healed. “Right shoulder dislocated or broken, I honestly haven't wanted to check. Probably my collarbone. Maybe a few ribs. Ouch.”

“You can't do this to me,” Star says, which is the most useless thing she could possibly say, and then puts herself to work. Sounds is muffled, this far down the chasm, but she thinks she hears voices above, making a plan to get them out. “Here, hold still, let me fix it.”

“I am holding still, I don't think I can move,” says Wynne, and Star takes a deep breath and starts healing her.

The worst part is first, and Star thinks she apologizes every time Wynne whimpers, while she arranges her bones into the right positions so she can heal them, after not taking care to once a few months ago with a broken finger and getting scolded by Tesni and getting no reproach at all from Wynne, who cried when Tesni had to rebreak her finger to set it right. She's learned her lessons, even if she wants to cry having to cause Wynne worse pain in order to fix her up. Still, she gets her where she needs to be, and puts her hands on Wynne's chest to begin with her ribs.

They're all stronger than they were when they began, but it still takes a frightening amount of her reserves before Wynne's breath starts coming easier, before she can start moving her leg and shoulder, groaning with it. The knits in the bones and skin feel terribly fragile, and Tesni will have work to do, but she can be moved, even if it just means hauling her up the chasm like a sack of potatoes.

It's Cordelia's clear voice that comes down and pierces the gloom at last. “Star, is she stable?”

“Enough to move,” Star shouts back, and they take her at her word, because a few seconds later an improvised rope swing drops down not far from them. Star has to help Wynne into it, and bind her to it, before she shouts up that they can lift her. “Don't find more trouble before I get out of here,” she tells Wynne, clasping her hand, and then she's pulled out of reach.

It's another five minutes before they lower the swing again, enough time that Star is eyeing the unevenness of the rock and soil, wondering if she could climb it. It feels galling to be pulled out like she needs rescuing, but it's the fastest way out, so she gets into the swing, holds on tight, and lets them lift her to the surface.

Cordelia and Trilli are waiting for her, with almost-identical purse-lipped expressions on their faces. “She'll be fine,” Trilli says, before Star can ask. “Tesni's looking after her.”

“You look tired,” Cordelia says, a bit more kindly. “You should go join them. No one will mind you taking off an hour or so, or even the rest of the day. We'll be helping out here all week.”

Star wants to object, wants to squirm a little at the kindness of it, but she's not going to do anyone much good until she's reassured that Wynne is safe and healthy, so she just nods. “Tell me where to go. I'll join you as soon as I can.”

Wynne is being put up in one of the recently built cottages, with Tesni and a few others fretting over her, but she smiles when she sees Star. “See?” she says. “I'm going to be just fine. You don't need to worry about me.”

Tesni looks at her like she understands more of it than Wynne does, but Star just pulls up a box next to Wynne's bed and reaches out for her hand. “I'll just keep you company for a little while before going back to work,” she promises, and holds on.

5.

Star loves the carnivorous sheep farm. Sometimes when they stop in, Valira is there, or Haoti Ewhoza, and Star has to avoid them or try to be polite, but on this visit, it's just the workers from the local village and the five of them taking a rest from their journey. She enjoys the luxury of rest, and is aware that it makes her dislike of Valira and the rest of her party hypocritical, but it is what it is, and she still enjoys the ocean views and the weaving, which always reminds her of her mother's home. Sometimes she helps with it, when she needs something to do with her hands.

Today, she's got a drop spindle in her hand, and she's sitting with her feet dangling off the edge of the bluff that overlooks the beach. The grass on the farm is all lush and green and dense with flowers, no doubt by Valira's grace, and it makes for a comfortable seat, even if it means she has to raise her arms above her head to spin properly.

Wynne announces her approach by tripping on a bootlace ten feet before she reaches Star. Star really needs to buy her a set of boots that don't lace, for the amount of times that particular disaster has befallen her. “At least I didn't fall over the cliff this time,” she says into the grass, before shoving herself up on her elbows.

Star, after considering for a moment, crawls in her direction rather than making Wynne come to her. She's been a little nervous of Wynne and steep drops since their adventure in the chasm. “It's a start, anyway.”

“Are you spinning again? I've been hoping you might teach me.”

“I'm not the best teacher,” she says, frowning a little.

“I don't care. I'd still like you to teach me.” Wynne looks dismayed. “Unless you think I'll be bad at it, or something.”

She might well be, but then again, how is she to improve if they wrap her up in cotton wool? “Come on, stand up, it's easier that way.”

Wynne scrambles up, Star more carefully following her, making sure not to drop her spinning. Wynne has a grass stain on her nose and a smile on her face. “Okay! I'm standing. What now?”

Star learned this at her mother's knee, and it's easy enough to do the motions slowly, explain them all bit by bit. Wynne may not be able to stay on her own feet, but she proves an adept enough pupil. Her yarn won't be good enough to weave or knit with, but it doesn't need to be yet. The afternoon spools away as they trade the spindle back and forth, making a lumpy, uneven mess of thread. The wool from the carnivorous sheep is so precious it makes Star wince to waste it, but Wynne is laughing and the sheep watching from nearby seem entertained, as far as she's been able to parse their expressions, so Star doesn't insist on fetching lesser wool to practice with.

“You're not ready for a wheel yet,” she says at the end of the hank of wool she brought out with her, “but a little more practice with this and you could get quite respectable.”

“It's a lot easier than picking locks.” The sun's moved far enough in the sky that it's probably time to start making dinner, and Wynne seems to agree, since she starts walking as soon as Star has gathered up everything she needs to keep moving. “You're good at it.”

“Well, I was supposed to be a weaver's apprentice. That's what you're started with. Well, any girl in my village learned that. I'm surprised you didn't.”

Wynne considers that. “I was probably supposed to learn, but they decided I was better suited to other things.”

“Well, I think you're perfectly suited. We'll keep practicing.” She has an abrupt memory of her mother and stops walking, takes a little thread that's strong enough to hold for a while, and uses her belt knife to cut it neatly off.

Wynne, looking back to see what she's doing, manages to trip over her bootlace again, though it's fully tied and tucked away, and stares at Star, bemused, from the ground. “What are you doing?”

“It's tradition.” She offers the thread, and then realizes her mistake and offers her hand instead, to pull Wynne to her feet, which they manage with the minimum of fuss and bother. When that's done with, she offers the thread again and Wynne takes it, a bit confused. “You keep your first thread. It's easier to see that improving than see your skills as a rogue—or a paladin—improving. I can spin fine thread now, but I still have my lumpy first effort in a bag in my gear. To remind me. You should keep yours.”

Wynne's smile breaks across her face like the sun coming out. “You're right. I should. Thank you for teaching me.”

Before they leave, Star begs an extra drop spindle and goes to the village to buy some cheaper wool to card into roving and spin, and if her friends all smile in their different ways when they see her packing it all into an already-full pack, well. Perhaps she doesn't mind very much.

+1.

“You always disappear on me at Fairpoint Hold,” Wynne complains when she discovers Star sitting up on the ramparts with a bestiary she stole from one of the residents, studying as best she can. She never breathed a word against this visit to the hold, after an encounter with a particularly nasty stone golem left them all limping even once Tesni and Star had spent all their healing magic, but she still doesn't feel comfortable in the company. At least she can study for future battles that might put them in danger.

“Sorry,” says Star, and even means it, a little. She puts the book down.

Wynne sits next to her, close enough that their sides are pressed together from shoulder to knee. “We're all fine. _I'm_ fine.”

“I know we are. But next time we might not be. I need to be faster, I need to—”

“ _You_ nearly got yourself killed trying to make sure no one else took a hit. It's not anybody else's fault? Just yours? Nothing to do with it knocking me down in the middle of the battle?”

Wynne was on her feet again in seconds, but it was still a bad moment. Star's seen her unconscious and fallen a few too many times to be easy seeing it more. “I know we're a team,” she says grudgingly, because that's really what Wynne wants to hear. “Nothing is only on me. But I still want to be better.”

“We all do. But you're already pretty amazing. I know I'm clumsy, and inconvenient—”

“You aren't! I keep saying.” Star scowls. “No more than I am for being difficult, or Trilli for starting a new song every day. If I have to hear one more lyric about Cordelia's horns—”

“Eventually Cordelia will figure out that Trilli doesn't have a crush on her sister,” says Wynne, dimples coming out with her smile. “We might have to deal with a few less songs then. I just ...” Her smile shrinks. “I worry sometimes. I'm getting better, but I'm not the best rogue out there. And you're always saving me. Don't you get tired of it?”

Star shakes her head so vigorously that her braid swings. “No. Well, I don't like you getting hurt, but that's worry for you, not convenience for me. I'd just like you to be as safe as you can be, adventuring.”

“I am. Even if I'm clumsy, one of you always saves me. Mostly you.” Wynne's smile comes back full force, but she ducks her head. “I suppose that's what I came up here to say, aside from worrying about you. That I'm glad you always save me, even if I wish you had to do it less. There's no one I'd rather see me at my worst.”

Star opens her mouth and closes it again on the mess of words that wants to come out all at once, about Wynne always seeking her out after she's had a bout of temper, and never minding Star's tendency to snap at people before she thinks, and accepting her apologies as Star gets better at giving them. Picking Wynne up and dusting her off after she falls seems little enough, in the face of that. “Me too,” she finally says, knowing it's inadequate.

Wynne doesn't seem to think it's inadequate, judging by the way she beams. “Okay then,” she says, and bounces a few times in her seat before she lunges forward and kisses Star.

Star is so startled that she rears back, and then she windmills her arms as she nearly falls backwards right into the courtyard and a hard fall onto stone that could injure her just as badly as the golem did. She doesn't fall, though, even if she should, and opens her eyes to find Wynne's hand firmly bunched in the fabric of her shirt and Wynne staring at her hand, startled, like she's not really sure she managed to keep Star from falling. “You caught me,” Star breathes, and then she's sitting up as fast as she can and kissing Wynne before she can ask if Star's surprise was a rejection. It wasn't. It won't ever be.

Maybe Wynne understands that, because she seems very happy to kiss Star back. “I did,” she says when they pull apart and Star has almost forgotten what she said, and for that, Star has to kiss her again.


End file.
